FTFA: As Mark K. Matthews of the Orlando Sentinel notes, the gateway spacecraft - orbiting at 277,000 miles from Earth - would be far more remote than the current International Space Station (ISS) located 200 miles above Earth.

Oh, you don't want to put stuff on the far side of the moon. That's where the alien bases are. We had to fake the televised moon landings because they killed everyone who went up there when the real landing happened in the '50s.

Not being educated in such matters I don't understand why they can not construct a space craft at the ISS to go to the moon and beyond, it has got to be easier to get there in a sizable craft that is already in orbit.

Tom_Slick:Not being educated in such matters I don't understand why they can not construct a space craft at the ISS to go to the moon and beyond, it has got to be easier to get there in a sizable craft that is already in orbit.

Because its in a very inclined orbit so the russians could get there. Its in the wrong place. The ISS is in the wrong place. Everytime we have this thread someone has to say it.

and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

So last night the guys and I got together to jam a bit and we were working on "Under Pressure" and I'll be damned if Dave our bassist just didn't start going off about his good times in Miami, girls in bikinis and such. So I walked out and just sat on the grass for a bit and let my girlfriend ride my bike around. I wish I could have given it to her but it was on loan from a friend. I'll give her whatever she wants if she is so inclined.

Linux_Yes:and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

Too expensive, compared to what? We are adding people to the planet at a rate of 210,000 per day. We are going to blink and there will be 9,000,000,000 of us. We better start learning how to get off this rock.

pxsteel:Linux_Yes: and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

Too expensive, compared to what? We are adding people to the planet at a rate of 210,000 per day. We are going to blink and there will be 9,000,000,000 of us. We better start learning how to get off this rock.

citation needed

At any rate, I don't disagree with you. Its going to be expensive regardless, and unmanned probes can only tell us so much.

I agree with the unmanned space trips for now. The moon is close enough to do all the experimentation you need to make manned missions cheaper and more efficient.

Send a small moon base that can self-configure and send a satellite to the point their talking about to relay data. Eventually, (just like the ISS) it can be expanded to be a legit base for future missions.

The ISS trips are fairly routine, so moving such an operation to the moon isn't a very far reaching idea.

AntonChigger:pxsteel: Linux_Yes: and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

Too expensive, compared to what? We are adding people to the planet at a rate of 210,000 per day. We are going to blink and there will be 9,000,000,000 of us. We better start learning how to get off this rock.

citation needed

At any rate, I don't disagree with you. Its going to be expensive regardless, and unmanned probes can only tell us so much.

Rumour spreadin' a-'round in that Lunar town'bout that shack orbiting LagrangeAnd you know what I'm talkin' about.Just let me know if you wanna goTo that home out at Lagrange.They gotta lotta nice girls ah.

pxsteel:Linux_Yes: and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

Too expensive, compared to what? We are adding people to the planet at a rate of 210,000 per day. We are going to blink and there will be 9,000,000,000 of us. We better start learning how to get off this rock.

Unless we discover Stargates similar to Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" (that can stay open for extended periods) we will never be able to relieve population pressure here on Earth through space travel. And even if we did, I suspect that the process of shoving 200,000 people per day (about 140 per minute) would be exceedingly cruel and casualty-prone. Not to mention the attrition rate on the virgin planets they would be sent to.

If you sit down and look at the math, however, I think you will see that the world can easily support 9 or even 20 billion people. Food? Water? These are DISTRIBUTION and POLITICAL issues. Get rid of the dictators who use food and water as weapons to control their populations and I think 99% of the problems will go away. Pollution? Technology solutions. AGW (if it exists)? Technology solutions.

The reason to get off Earth are those of racial survival. One of these days a big rock is gonna slap us.

Just Another OC Homeless Guy:pxsteel: Linux_Yes: and they want the taxpayer to foot the bill too. that way, the tax payer takes the risks/foots the bill, and the contract companies make any profits that come out of the research. that there is Freedom, baby! Socialists!!

they need to stick with unmanned space trips. manned is way too expensive.

Too expensive, compared to what? We are adding people to the planet at a rate of 210,000 per day. We are going to blink and there will be 9,000,000,000 of us. We better start learning how to get off this rock.

Unless we discover Stargates similar to Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" (that can stay open for extended periods) we will never be able to relieve population pressure here on Earth through space travel. And even if we did, I suspect that the process of shoving 200,000 people per day (about 140 per minute) would be exceedingly cruel and casualty-prone. Not to mention the attrition rate on the virgin planets they would be sent to.

If you sit down and look at the math, however, I think you will see that the world can easily support 9 or even 20 billion people. Food? Water? These are DISTRIBUTION and POLITICAL issues. Get rid of the dictators who use food and water as weapons to control their populations and I think 99% of the problems will go away. Pollution? Technology solutions. AGW (if it exists)? Technology solutions.

The reason to get off Earth are those of racial survival. One of these days a big rock is gonna slap us.

If by "technology solutions" you mean engineering people to not need food and water, I can agree with you, but eventually we will reach a point in time where if we still have the same kind of bodied existence we do now, there simply won't be enough space on the planet for everyone. What happens if the UN's estimated (this number is statistically possible but they believe we'll all kill ourselves off before it happens) population of 125 trillion people in 2300? That number of people would require literally the entire land mass of the Earth to just stand them on with only a handful of square feet each.

We're talking about needing radically different ways of living, floating sky cities, underwater countries, space colonies, or giving up the entire position of bodied existence, or genetically engineering us to photosynthesize. There will come a time when we still exist as homo sapiens, there simply won't be enough space for us to stand on this planet, and what happens then? We stop breeding, stagnate, and control our population, or we find some other place to live.

Mr. Carpenter:If by "technology solutions" you mean engineering people to not need food and water, I can agree with you, but eventually we will reach a point in time where if we still have the same kind of bodied existence we do now, there simply won't be enough space on the planet for everyone. What happens if the UN's estimated ... population of 125 trillion people in 2300?

125 trillion? Bullshiat! UN population estimates average about the 9 billion in the year 2300...about half again as many people as Earth has now. Only by extending the growth rate of the second half of the 20th century to they even ger as high as 35 billion. Nowhere close to even one trillion, much less 125 times that.

Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

StoneColdAtheist:Mr. Carpenter: If by "technology solutions" you mean engineering people to not need food and water, I can agree with you, but eventually we will reach a point in time where if we still have the same kind of bodied existence we do now, there simply won't be enough space on the planet for everyone. What happens if the UN's estimated ... population of 125 trillion people in 2300?

125 trillion? Bullshiat! UN population estimates average about the 9 billion in the year 2300...about half again as many people as Earth has now. Only by extending the growth rate of the second half of the 20th century to they even ger as high as 35 billion. Nowhere close to even one trillion, much less 125 times that.

Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

My bad you're right, it's not 125 trillion, I was just working from memory. It's actually 134 trillion, so even higher. I'm guessing you have zero reading comprehension and zero access to google since the study is LITERALLY the top link when you type in "UN population estimates 2300."

Goddamn you're an idiot. Read my post, read what I said, use google to figure it out for yourself.

StoneColdAtheist:Mr. Carpenter: If by "technology solutions" you mean engineering people to not need food and water, I can agree with you, but eventually we will reach a point in time where if we still have the same kind of bodied existence we do now, there simply won't be enough space on the planet for everyone. What happens if the UN's estimated ... population of 125 trillion people in 2300?

125 trillion? Bullshiat! UN population estimates average about the 9 billion in the year 2300...about half again as many people as Earth has now. Only by extending the growth rate of the second half of the 20th century to they even ger as high as 35 billion. Nowhere close to even one trillion, much less 125 times that.

Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

Oh and instead of cherry picking graphs and selectively EDITING MY POST to change what I said, specifically removing the (this is statistically possible BUT...) part, how about you trying being a little bit more ethical and a little bit less dis-ingenious

Mr. Carpenter:StoneColdAtheist: Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

Oh and instead of cherry picking graphs and selectively EDITING MY POST to change what I said, specifically removing the (this is statistically possible BUT...) part, how about you trying being a little bit more ethical and a little bit less dis-ingenious

Get over yourself, asshat. It is not even "statistically possible". Your own source notes that "A fifth scenario is added by simply extending the constant-fertility scenario in the 2002 Revision, therefore holding total fertility indefinitely at its level in 1995-2000. This scenario produces an unrealistic, and almost unimaginable world population of 134 trillion by 2300."

That word "unrealistic" doesn't mean "statistically possible"...it means it can't happen. Here's why: we currently produce enough food on Earth to feed about half again as many people as we do now (due to spoilage, waste, diverting grains into fuels production, etc.). By careful management we could probably double our acreage under cultivation, which would get us to ~20 billion. We could also probably double our production rate per acre, which might get us to 40 billion, though at that number we'd be susceptible to random mass starvation due to hiccups in production and distribution.

Let's say we could get to 50 billion with careful, world-wide management. That's one-twentieth of ONE trillion. Nowhere near 134 trillion. What's more, other studies that include such factors as forced relocation (off farmable land into towns and cities) and forced reallocation of resources still don't come up with even 1% of that 134 trillion.

The only thing that number proves is that someone at the UN knows how to program a simple equation into a computer.

PallMall:StoneColdAtheist: Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

Mr. Carpenter:StoneColdAtheist: Mr. Carpenter: If by "technology solutions" you mean engineering people to not need food and water, I can agree with you, but eventually we will reach a point in time where if we still have the same kind of bodied existence we do now, there simply won't be enough space on the planet for everyone. What happens if the UN's estimated ... population of 125 trillion people in 2300?

125 trillion? Bullshiat! UN population estimates average about the 9 billion in the year 2300...about half again as many people as Earth has now. Only by extending the growth rate of the second half of the 20th century to they even ger as high as 35 billion. Nowhere close to even one trillion, much less 125 times that.

Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

Um....We hit 7,000,000,000 earlier this year. We are currently at 7,041,000,000. We will hit 7.1 in July next year, 10 months from now. 2300.... we will hit 7.5 in less than 6 years from now. We will be scarring the h3ll out of 9B by the time today's newborn graduates high school.

So why not let India take the lead at colonizing space? They seem to have the edge at educating engineers these days and can afford to lose astronauts at a larger rate. Hell they'll probably drop more off the outside of the train in Mumbai on the way to work than they'll lose by explody rocketships.

pxsteel: I don't worry about the end of the Earth so much... it's a big ball of rock. Pretty, but ultimately just a thing. My concern is for us. Our technological progress seems to be vastly outstripping our moral progress, which seems to be setting us up for some calamities.

StoneColdAtheist:Mr. Carpenter: StoneColdAtheist: Most population scientists think our population will peak at about 7.5 billion later this century before dropping to about half our present 6 billion. Earth will be a very nice place to live in the year 2300.

Oh and instead of cherry picking graphs and selectively EDITING MY POST to change what I said, specifically removing the (this is statistically possible BUT...) part, how about you trying being a little bit more ethical and a little bit less dis-ingenious

Get over yourself, asshat. It is not even "statistically possible". Your own source notes that "A fifth scenario is added by simply extending the constant-fertility scenario in the 2002 Revision, therefore holding total fertility indefinitely at its level in 1995-2000. This scenario produces an unrealistic, and almost unimaginable world population of 134 trillion by 2300."

That word "unrealistic" doesn't mean "statistically possible"...it means it can't happen. Here's why: we currently produce enough food on Earth to feed about half again as many people as we do now (due to spoilage, waste, diverting grains into fuels production, etc.). By careful management we could probably double our acreage under cultivation, which would get us to ~20 billion. We could also probably double our production rate per acre, which might get us to 40 billion, though at that number we'd be susceptible to random mass starvation due to hiccups in production and distribution.

Let's say we could get to 50 billion with careful, world-wide management. That's one-twentieth of ONE trillion. Nowhere near 134 trillion. What's more, other studies that include such factors as forced relocation (off farmable land into towns and cities) and forced reallocation of resources still don't come up with even 1% of that 134 trillion.

The only thing that number proves is that someone at the UN knows how to program a simple equation in ...

Herper derper goddamn you can't even count to potato can you? Did you even read the post you initially responded to? Did you? Did you at all? And IT IS POSSIBLE it would require that fertility rates STAY THE EXACT SAME which they don't think would happen. But uh, basically it said "if the trends we are experiencing right now continue on unchanged for 300 years there will be 134 trillion people, this is an unfeasible and untenable situation.

Can you not read at all? Really? Do you even UNDERSTAND what we're arguing about here? Did you even read my post and the HYPOTHETICAL question it posed? I said "what happens IF" and linked to an outlier but possible scenario presented by one of the biggest and most comprehensive studies.

Goddamn either you can't read or you're just trying to be argumentative for argument's sake.